[Previous entry: "Al-Qaeda disowns 'fake letter'"] [Next entry: "Republican Congressman Slams Bush On Militarized Police State Preparation"]

10/14/2005:

"Israel army to fight human shield ban"

The Israeli army has signalled its intention to keep using Palestinian civilians as human shields in operations aimed at assassinating, arresting or kidnapping Palestinian political and resistance activists.

The Israeli High Court issued a ruling earlier this week barring the army from using Palestinian civilians as human shields, a practice used heavily in the West Bank, particularly since the outbreak of the Palestinian intifada or uprising in 2000.

On Tuesday, Israeli military sources said the army would press the High Court to reconsider the ruling on the ground that it would complicate "army activities" in the West Bank.
aljazeera.net

Beyond Chutzpah
A review of Norman Finkelstein, Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History, University of California Press 2005

It is not everyday that a professor hires a prestigious law firm to threaten the University of California Press, yet for months Alan Dershowitz, Harvard's Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law, tried to stop UC Press from publishing Norman Finkelstein's Beyond Chutzpah. When the Press' director Lynne Withey replied that she believed in academic freedom and would therefore go ahead with the book, Dershowitz sent letters to the university's board of trustees and even to California's governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, asking them to intervene on his behalf. Following both the trustees' and governor's decision not to get involved, one would have thought that the struggle had ended, but now that the book is on the shelves it seems that a new campaign is underway; this time an attempt to cancel the author's reading engagements for example at Harvard Bookstore and Barnes and Noble in Chicago. So what is the controversy about?